


Cleverest of Them All (Snow White AU)

by startrekto221B



Series: Fairy Tales [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Alternate Universe - Snow White Fusion, Complete, Eventual Romance, Exile, Fairy Tale Retellings, Fairy Tale Style, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Poison Apples, Prince Sherlock, Robin Hood References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 04:08:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3714406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/startrekto221B/pseuds/startrekto221B
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snow White AU<br/>***<br/>Mirror mirror on the wall,<br/>Who is the cleverest of them all?<br/>“It is you, Jim…”<br/>“But?” he snapped coldly, “Speak up. And know if you’re lying to me, I’ll make you into shards.”<br/>“There is one destined to surpass you,” the voice said cautiously.<br/>“Show him to me,” he insisted.<br/>The image in the mirror changed from his own reflection to the image of the prince. He was far from the castle. Had probably snuck out. He was examining a body in a morgue. Rattling off deductions as to how it died. He was good. Too good. <br/>***</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cleverest of Them All (Snow White AU)

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away…

A woman sat by the window, quietly sewing as she watched the snowfall. Suddenly seized by the desire to breathe fresh air she scooted closer to the windowsill and opened the window just a crack, allowing the cool breeze to flow in and the smallest snowflake to land on her cheek. Watching her sew was a sight to behold for she had fair long-fingered hands, and the speed at which she embroidered black swirls into the silken blanket was a marvel of practiced skill. Had she not been a queen men would have still written songs and poetry about her, for she was a great beauty, with soft brown hair framing a fair face with sparkling blue eyes, high cheekbones and perfect cupid’s bow lips. But she was a queen, and for that reason admirers came from far and wide to gaze upon her. For she was the heart of the people’s beloved king, and therefore the heart of the kingdom. As was the child that she would soon bear.

As she admired the beauty of the falling snow, considering to herself how amazing and special it was that each snowflake that fell was vastly different, and that tiny as each was how each winter thousands and thousands built up into a thick white blanket that buried the land for miles around, her hand slipped. The needle poked into the tip of her index finger and three drops of red blood fell upon the snow on the ebony windowsill.

She smiled at the sight, “How I wish I could have a child as fair as snow, hair black as ebony, and lips red as blood,”

Elsewhere in the castle the king dealt with various ambassadors, ministers and courtiers. All wanting his opinion. His endorsement. Filing complaints about one thing or another. It was a quite a bit to manage. Being king was a tremendous responsibility. Not to be taken lightly. He walked through the hallowed halls of his forefathers as he did every day. Their statues and portraits looked upon him at every turn. Reminding him that his destiny and that of his descendants was the continuation of a great legacy.

He sighed, “How I wish I could have a child that is a genius,”

Both wishes were fulfilled. When the baby was born it was named Prince Snow White. This is his story.

***

Shortly after the birth of the little prince the king fell ill. He died soon thereafter, letting the succession fall to a distance relative. So began the reign of King James Moriarty. The Spider King as he came to be called, for his slipper manner and tangled web of spies and victims. In his quarters he had acquired for himself a magic mirror, which told him the goings-on in all parts of the kingdom, allowing to spy at will and know everything he wished.  

Every day he would ask the same question.

_Mirror mirror on the wall,_

_Who is the cleverest of them all?_

“It is you, Jim,” a voice, seemingly coming from the center of the glass, replied silkily.

“Excellent,”

And every day the same answer was returned. Until one clear January morning, it was not.

_Mirror mirror on the wall,_

_Who is the cleverest of them all?_

“It is you, Jim…”

“But?” he snapped coldly, “Speak up. And know if you’re lying to me, I’ll make you into shards.”

“There is one destined to surpass you,” the voice said cautiously.

“Show him to me,” he insisted.

The image in the mirror changed from his own reflection to the image of the prince. He was far from the castle. Had probably snuck out. He was examining a body in a morgue. Rattling off deductions as to how it died. He was good. Too good.

“He must be stopped,” Moriarty grinned, then turned to a guard, “Call the huntsman,”

A woodsman was brought forth to him by the name of Gregory Lestrade. For years Lestrade had worked for the king. Carrying out his sadistic crimes. Kidnapping the men he needed, conducting interrogations. He was good at his job. And decently unfazed when he heard what he had to do now.

“I want you to bring me the heart of the Prince,” Moriarty said coldly, “Make it discreet,”

Lestrade bowed low and agreed. After all, it was a terrible idea to get on the bad side of the King. Even when he wasn’t drunk on power he was still a menace.

He wondered where he would find the prince at this hour, and realized immediately he would be in the laboratory he had built in the dungeons. As he descended into the dungeons he kept his expression even, after all, Snow White could not suspect anything.

“What does a woodsman want with me?” a deep baritone voice remarked from within a cloud of smoke.

“What are you doing?” Greg coughed.

“Mixing chemicals, obviously, I need to test the effect of a particular acid on eyeball decay, pig’s eyes are a decent substitute for human, the gas is released upon contact with the tissue,” Snow White said quickly.

“There’s been a crime,” Greg improvised wildly, “We need your help,”

“We? Who’s we?” Snow White raised an eyebrow suspiciously, “What kind of crime?”

“A case of serial suicides, the woodsmen know you’re the only one who can help us mate,”

Greg gulped as he watched the prince consider it, and breathed a sigh of relief when Snow White put down the beaker in his hand and said, “I’ll come,”

***

By the time they reached the edge of the forest where Greg had said the crime had occurred it was dark outside. Sherlock looked all around him and then at Greg.

“There is no crime is there,” he narrowed his eyes at Greg, strangely calm.

“No,” Greg admitted, pulling out a knife and pointing it at the prince’s heart. They were alone. He was unarmed. It would be so easy just to take it.

“What’s wrong? Come this far and not going to kill me? That’s not like you, Greg is it? I can tell just by the look of you that you’ve done far worse,”

“They told me about your mind games, it’s not going to work,” Greg said defiantly.

“Are you really going to kill me?” Snow White asked, “Or would it be easier if I simply did it for you? Took my own heart out of my chest and presented it to you so that you could hand it to your master and keep on living your sick, cowardly life?”

“I’m not a coward,” Greg raised his voice slightly.

“Then prove it,” Snow White spat.

“If I don’t kill you, then what can I do?” Greg implored, “He’ll kill me. He’ll do worse than kill me. You know what he’s like, mate,”

“Kill a deer in the woods, send that to him, and then run,”

“Where will you go?” Greg asked.

“If he is after my life I cannot go back,” Snow White rationalized, “Otherwise it is no more of your concern,”

Greg killed the first deer he saw. A gently, lovely creature. A mother. But he had little time to grieve for the loss of her life. He sent back the deer heart to the King as Snow White’s. And himself died the next day.

***

As a prince he was unused to the wilderness. Found it hard to sleep on the cold hard ground of the forest. Nearly impossible to shoot and kill animals with a crudely fashioned bow. He set up traps that broke. Searched in vain for a shelter from the rain. Was horribly, horribly bored. He almost considered going back. Facing King James Moriarty head on. But that would be death.

It was lucky then, just as he faced a break in his resolve he was startled by an arrow pacing by his head and sticking in a target inscribed in a tree.

“Sorry about that,” a blonde man dressed all in dark green, with a green cap and a fine bow and arrow emerged from within the trees.

“Stag or treason?” Snow White asked.

“What? How did you—“

“You’re dressed all in green, appear reasonably familiar with this forest, obviously you live here. No one would do so by choice. So you’re in exile. You don’t have the bearings of the murderer, were sorry that you almost hit me with an arrow, so no affinity for violence. You speak the common tongue, but not like a peasant, so not petty theft. The only other offenses that would land you here are killing a stag from the royal herd or high treason, which is it?”

“That was amazing,”

“You didn’t answer the question,”

“I don’t intend to,” the man extended his hand genially, “John Watson, you look pretty roughed up. Want to join myself and the merry men for a feast?”

“Your _merry men_?”

“Yeah, we steal from the rich and give to the poor, not a difficult conflict, what did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t,” Snow White said.

“What is it?” John asked.

“You didn’t answer my question, why should I answer yours?” Snow White crossed his arms.

“Come on then, Sherlock, you look hungry,” John beckoned him to follow, “Unless you’d rather stay here of course,”

“Sherlock?”

“Yes, if you’re going to live around here you can be secretive if you wish but I’d rather you had a name,” John explained.

“Sherlock means fair haired,” Snow White pointed out.

“Living in the woods does give you a tremendous appreciation for irony,”

***

So it came to be that Snow White, or Sherlock, as he came to be called, lived with the merry men, sharing a shelter in the woods with John the first day because he was new, and every day after because John had taken a liking to him. As people came to John with their problems, people who needed money or who were having problems with the King he helped them. Often going on raids and undermining Moriarty at every chance he got. Soon too word spread that at his right hand John had a man who could solve the most complex of riddles. People came to the forest to see this Consulting Detective, as he called himself, and together John and Sherlock would hear out their cases. Sherlock had almost forgotten he was a hunted man. Almost forgotten that Jim Moriarty wanted to burn the heart out of him. But Jim had not forgotten.

One day for the first time in a long time he faced the mirror.

_Mirror mirror on the wall,_

_Who is the cleverest of them all?_

“The detective in the woods,” the mirror replied.

“Impossible,” the King snapped, “Only Snow White could have surpassed me. Snow White. There is our problem. Our final problem.”

***

“That first day,” Sherlock said one day when they were alone together, walking through the forest, “When I asked you whether it was killing a stag or treason that got you here, why didn’t you answer?”

“Because we are both hunted men, and I didn’t trust you completely just yet,”

“Tell me now,”

John stopped walking suddenly and stopped to stare at Sherlock. It had only been a few months that he had been with them but it already felt like he had always been there. He felt a strange pull to the man. And the strangest feeling that he recognized his face.

“I took part in a protest against the king,” John started to explain, “Against his right to rule now that Snow White had come of age,”

“You were protesting for Snow White?”

“Everyone knows he’s the rightful king,” John said, “There’s more public support than you might think down in these parts. It’s too bad now that he’s gone missing. What a king he would be you know? Clever as they come. Hair as black as ebony, lips as red as blood, skin as fair as snow…”

John paused, looking at Sherlock intently, pulling his face down closer until their noses were almost touching, until he could feel Sherlock’s warm breath on his cheek, “Are you—?”

Sherlock’s heart raced at John’s proximity, and he was about to answer when they were suddenly interrupted.

“John!” a green clad man shouted in the distance.

They snapped apart, suddenly awkward. John cursed the timing, another minute more and he might have kissed him.

“We’ll finish this later,” John said before dashing away, “I promise,”

***

But later never came. After John returned he told Sherlock of a woman that the king had pledged to kill unless Sherlock solved his riddle. And once this one was solved there was another. And then another. Each time getting harder and deadlier. They were never alone. And to his utter disappointment, Sherlock almost seemed to be enjoying this. This great game.

“Does it really mean nothing to you?” John asked.

“Will caring help me solve any of this?” Sherlock retorted.

“No,”

“Then I’ll continue not to make that mistake,”

John stalked away, “You and the king should be very happy together,”

That evening when John was gone Sherlock went over to the lake at the edge of the forest. And didn’t seem surprised when he was joined by the king himself, for at the conclusion of the last riddle he had invited him there. To end it once and for all.

“I owe you a fall, Snow White, or should I call you Sherlock now?” the king smirked.

“Either is fine,” Sherlock remarked evenly.

“I was trying to take your heart earlier, but I was totally going about it the wrong way. That’s not really your heart.”

“What are you talking about?” Sherlock stilled, nervous.

“The mirror sees all, Snow. I see the way you look at him. Your almost kiss in the forest. It’s touching,” the king grinned manically, “Shame to lose it all,”

Jim pulled out two apples from his pocket, upon both were carved out the letters I.O.U.

“Explain,” Sherlock demanded.

“Simple isn’t it, one is poisoned the other is not, I’ll bite the one you don’t,” Jim said.

“It’s a 50-50 chance,”

“It’s not chance, it’s chess, chance was letting Greg Lestrade take you into the forest, chance was letting you fall into the ready arms of John Watson, this is a battle of wits,” Jim extended the apple in his right hand to him.

“Is it a bluff? A double bluff? Triple bluff? Am I giving you the poisoned apple? Or do I have it in my other hand?” Jim laughed coldly.

Sherlock took both in his hands, considered them. They were almost exactly identical. No obvious physical markings. So he had only the psyche of a madman to go off of. No, this was foolish. He wouldn’t do this. John was wrong about him. He didn’t enjoy playing Moriarty’s game.

“I don’t have to pick, I don’t have to pick at all,” he gave both apples back to Jim.

“Your friends will die if you don’t,” Jim said threateningly.

“John,”

“Everyone,” Jim hissed, “The merry men,”

“If I don’t bite one,” Sherlock nodded.

He took the one in Moriarty’s left hand, “You first,”

“Together,”

They both bit into their apples. Moriarty was fine, but Sherlock fell to the ground.

“Pity, so young, and no one who loves you in return to wake you up,” the king whistled a tune to himself and walked away.

The King’s men put the prince in a wooden casket with a clear lid, and left it there by the side of the lake. John came home to an empty room in the middle of the woods. And was forced to consider that Sherlock had left just as easily as he came. It pained him. After all they had been through. They had at least been friends. And perhaps something more. He still remembered the look in Sherlock’s eyes when they had been so close.

A year past. Then another. And when the first snow of winter came John went farther out to the edge of the forest than he ever did, and spotted something hidden behind a row of trees.

He brushed the snow off the sides of the rectangular mound, and read _Here lies Snow White_.

Fascinated, he brushed off the top, and gasped. Even in death, or what looked like an eternal sleep, Sherlock was so beautiful. So calm and peaceful. Nothing like he was in life.

John opened the casket delicately, and tried to shake the man inside, wake him up. But nothing he did seemed to make a difference. He put some snow on his face to see if the sensation of cold would do anything for him, but to no avail.

He considered all their time together. Laughing around the forest. Joking around at the feasts they through. Following him as they took the cases. He remembered that day. Remembered the _almost_ that had hung in the air between them constantly. He thought it had hurt when Sherlock had left. But it hurt more seeing him like this. Frozen still. Cursed by the king who had wronged him so much. And John was sorry about the last thing he had ever said to him. Sorry he hadn’t told him how much he meant to him when he was awake and could hear him. But he might as well say it now.

“I was living here in the forest, and I had the men of course, and it was fine, but then you came. Sometimes I thought you weren’t even human but I was wrong. You were the most human human being that I have ever known. And the wisest. I had people all around me but I was so alone. And I owe you so much,” John said, and in a burst of emotion he leaned down to kiss Sherlock on his still, soft lips.

Nothing happened. John for his part was surprised. He had realized at long last that he had fallen in love with Sherlock/Snow White. Perhaps it was because the sleeping man did not love him in return. Still, even so, John stroked the black curls and the fair, long fingered hand.

“Good night Sherlock,” he said sadly.

But as he turned to leave John heard the rustling of fabric. Then a familiar baritone voice. He hadn’t been gladder to hear a sound in all his life.

“Leaving so soon?” Sherlock asked.

“Well I’m a bit pissed, seeing as true love’s kiss apparently has a lag time!” John snapped, unable to keep the grin off his face.

“We could try it again,” Sherlock said, and John needed no other invitation.

He put his arms around Sherlock’s neck and kissed him deeply, relishing the feel of his warm, soft lips, still warm despite the cold of winter around them. And Sherlock kissed back, loving the fact that his first breaths of air after so long were shared with John, his heart, his real heart. But that reminded him of something. The king was still alive.

“What happened to the king?” Sherlock broke away suddenly.

“He was found dead in the woods the same day you disappeared, poisoned apple in hand,”

“Both were poisoned, he took the smaller bite but it still killed him,” Sherlock reasoned.

“I should take you back to the palace, they’ll be thrilled to see you,”

“I can lift the charges of treason on you,” Sherlock got out of the casket and leaned on John for support, not used to the feeling of walking after such a long time.

“I’d love to go back home,” John said, kissing him again.

And so they went back to the capital city. Where Snow White and Leader of the Merry Men, or Sherlock and John, lived happily ever after. Till the end of their days.

_Mirror mirror on the wall,_

_Who is the luckiest one of all?_

“Do you really need me to answer that Snow White?”

“Obviously not mirror, for that question your function as a regular mirror is adequate enough,”

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first in my series of Johnlock fairy tales. I plan to do Snow White, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Beauty and the Beast (maybe), and Frozen? Any I'm missing?


End file.
